Action Books Talks to the Translators of Diary of a Proletarian Seamstress, by Poet Victoria Guerrero Peirano

For the Action Books blog, Austyn Wohlers interviews Honora Spicer and Anastatia Spicer, co-translators of Peruvian poet Victoria Guerrero Peirano's book, Diary of a Proletarian Seamstress (Diario de una costurera proletaria). Half of the poetry book comprises lyrical, personal writing "about the poet’s relationship with textile work in her family," and the other half is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. From their conversation, which also touches on Cecilia Vicuña's work with textiles, and hierarchies of knowledge:

AW: Was there a moment of translation that was particularly challenging, or a moment that was very memorable to you?

AS: Maybe we’ve returned to this before, but it definitely is memorable to me, because it felt like one of our main goals in translation, like my sister was just talking about, was in bringing dignity and reverence to the work of the seamstress. When we got some edits back, a lot of those things were changed, like my sister was just referring to, that were quite demeaning. That was a very memorable moment to me—to be like, “Oh, how are other people viewing the idea of this work,” even when it’s in this context of total respect, or at least how I read it as total respect, and then talking to Victoria it was clear that that was also how she intended for it to be written. That was quite memorable.

HS: Yeah, an example of that was in the first section, where there’s this line “La costurerita ha tomado la antigua máquina de coser”, and we had first translated “la costurerita” as “the dear seamstress,” as a diminutive, but a very affectionate diminutive, and one of the edits we got back was suggesting that we replace “dear” with “lowly”—and I have this memory of getting the email, pulling off at the side of the road to talk to Anastatia, consulting her, and being like “We can’t let this happen!”

AS: It was also this feeling of not being familiar with this world of publishing, and then seeing very quickly and viscerally how the system is working in this way that these poems are addressing, and then to have it be shut down. I think that we were in a position where we didn’t need to accept those edits, but obviously that is not always the position that most people are in.

HS: Women writers.

AS: Yes. Women writers. So that was definitely also very powerful to feel—this very sleight of hand that is so powerful.

HS: And that’s an aspect in terms of choosing this translation. With Rosa Alcalá we were talking a lot about the way in which most translators are female and most writers who are translated are male, and we were very clear that we were interested in translating a female poet.…

Excerpts from Diary of a Proletarian Seamstress can be read at Asymptote Journal. For the full interview, head to Action Books.